The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960.

Since the copyright notice is not on any forum pages, I wouldn't expect it to apply to any forum content.

For example, Facebook owns a copy of any content posted or uploaded. By posting or uploading, you agree to grant Facebook a license to use their copy of your content any way they like, including transferring a copy and its license to a third party. You further agree that Facebook does not owe you compensation for that content or its license or royalties for the use of the content.

The interesting thing about the Facebook license is that they give you an option to terminate the license. If you delete content from your account, you revoke the (implicit) license you previously granted Facebook. Many sites specify that posting or uploading content grants the license in perpetuity, even if you later delete the content.

A lot of people overreact to Facebook's terms, saying that Facebook "steals" the rights to content you created. As the original creator, you still have a copyright to content you create. Facebook does not become the owner. Facebook just gets to use your content royalty-free, until you delete it.

Obviously IllinoisCarry.com doesn't pay anyone for anything they post. As for the rest, I don't want to make it complicated, but I wonder if some default license would apply to forum content at IllinoisCarry.com.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960.

... which you could do as the copyright holder, no matter what license terms applied because it was posted here, because you could do that even if it weren't posted here.

The question, though, is if that was necessary. Does posting the photo here implicitly grant any reader the license to re-use it?

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960.

For a photograph, unless it's thumb-nailed, reuse without license or author permission is piracy. Fair use has several other conditions that would have to be met, as well, like public interest (e.g., education or debate, like the Zapruder film) or transformative extent of the reuse (e.g., parody).

"Here's a cool picture I like, unaltered and at full resolution" isn't fair use.

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.- Albert Camus, Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, 1960.